Chapter Text
"You want to do what with my kids!?" Aizawa stood up suddenly. His quirk activating in response to his anger.
"I simply want them to learn about how to deal with the possible traitor. I thought I explained it quite well." Nezu smiled innocently, unsurprised that Aizawa reacted this way to his idea. It was understandable really, those kids have already been through far to much this year, making them lose trust in each other with the news of a traitor would do no one any good. But they had the right to know.
"You want to make one of them act as though they're a traitor and let them pretend to kill and seriously injure their classmates." He had both his hands firm on the table, trying to ground himself. But Nezu didn't seem to take any notice to it.
"It's not as bad as it seems."
"Oh really? Then go ahead explain. I'll wait." He remained standing, though he had crossed his arms now, looking directly at the rodent he had been working for for the past few years.
"Okay! The plan is that we have the entirety of the Hero Course be informed of the test, they will then receive one letter each within the next two to four days. The letter will be found halfway through their door and should one already be opened before the intended person gets to it they shall report it and the letter cycle will happen again. Before the letters are handed out they shall be shuffled and not tampered with. This is to ensure that even we do not know who the traitor could be. And before you say that we should know I dont think we do, in fact, this could be a fun little test for us as well!" He paused for a second to take a sip of his tea. He glanced around to see the teachers shift in their seats. He set the teacup down again and continued.
"The different roles each person could get are: The Traitor, Hero, Target, and Messenger. Each of these roles are very different as you have to use different skills in order to survive!" Aizawa glared hardend at him. Nezu suppressed a cackle.
"First the Traitor, pretty obvious, the student this is a signed to has to act as though they're a traitor, they have to stay hidden for a week, leaving two weeks for the students to then train for fighting someone who was once their friend, but has now turned enemy. The traitor will either get revealed before the week is up this ending the exercise, or will play into the part set and revel themselves in a dramatic fashion. The traitor has many other tasks to complete during the three weeks. One is to kill the targets before the three weeks is up. Another is to frame other students in order to keep the blame off of themselves. But the most important one is to cause a such chaos as possible! They get information straight of the bat with an extra bit of paper of writing in there's, to make sure you dont feel them out every other letter will have a blank sheet of paper." Aizawa cursed as Nezu met his eye in particular.
"Next is the Hero, the role that the majority of the students will have. They shall continue as normal whilst trying to figure out who the traitor is and capture them. They also need to figure out who the targets are and protect them at all times."
"The Targets job is to keep themselves alive for as long as possible, but they too have to figure out who the traitor is and capture them. It is one of the more difficult roles to play. Whoever gets this role should do well to secure someone safe. Someone who they can guarantee is not the traitor."
"And how would they be able to find that person? I doubt that the traitor is going to be going around being suspicious on purpose. What if they trust the wrong person? What if Jirou or Shoji gets traitor and overhears the conversation?" Aizawa asked with a raised eye-brow. Nezu grinned.
"Now that is entirely up to the students to figure out!" Aizawa sighed. Gesturing for his boss to continue.
"Now lastly we have the Messenger. This person will know who the traitor is but won't able to tell us as they are playing the role of an inquisitive student who discovered the traitor and is now being threatened. They work with the Hero's and are on the side of the Hero's. But they should not be trusted with classified information. The traitor is the person that chooses how the Messenger acts, this also means demanding information and spy work. Which makes this role quite possibly the toughest role that someone could find themselves with."
"Does that answer some of your questions?" Aizawa slumped back down into his chair. Pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Hold up, why is my class involved? His is the one that keeps being attacked! Shouldn't that mean that they need to be the ones preparing?" Vlad King questioned, Nezu merely smiled at him.
"Because they too are apart of the Hero Course! And for all we know the traitor is one of them!" That left Vlad King fuming. But he didn't argue. Having learnt that that was a useless endeavour years ago.
Aizawa thought over the information given. Trying to find some kind of loophole that he could exploit.
"Is there a chance that no one gets traitor?"
The rodent turned his smile to face Aizawa. "Yes! there will be 52 cards to be handed out in total but of course only 40 of them will actually get to someone! Only three of them will say traitor, only two will say target, and only one will say messenger! That way there's a chance that normality will continue and this meeting could be a complete waste of time!! Brilliant don't you think?"
"What if there is more then one traitor?"
"Then there's more then one traitor! For all we know there's more then one giving information to the League right now!" He cheered. Clapping his paws together in delight.
With that unsettling thought hanging in the air, they continued to talk, listen, and explain what was going on. The teachers that weren't the home room teachers to the two classes were just glad that they didn't have to worry about their kids getting hurt.
"Okay! That was a very productive meeting, thank you Aizawa and Kan, for finally agreeing to this idea. I shall start preparing! You both should inform your classes that they will have to work together for once instead of fighting one another." With that, the principal left, headed back to his office. Probably to drink tea as he laughed about the chaos that he's caused.
"I'm still not quite sure about this idea...for a child to act like a villain..." All Might said with furrowed eyebrows. What if he had to see his Midoriya act like something he'd not? Act as though he's a heartless, ruthless, cunning, slimy, villain. He even couldn't handle the idea of it.
"Well that's to bad Yagi. Nezu has already made up his mind and his mind is set on the idea. So I suggest that you suck it up and deal with it." Dispite his words, Aizawa was worried about Shinsou, what if he got the Traitor card? Would that set something off? What if everyone hated him because he got traitor and had a "villainous" quirk? But there wasn't anything he could do, no matter his thoughts and fears on the matter. He couldn't tamper with the roles and he definitely couldn't convince Nezu to just hand pick the traitor. He would just have to deal with it.
"My class isn't going to like the idea of having to work with yours Aizawa, hell they might just outright refuse to do it and work by themselves." But Aizawa had already left the room in the kiddle of what he was saying. 'Damn it, how will Monoma react to this?' Monoma was famous for his dislike of class 1A. Vlad King might have been guilty for encouraging the behaviour but he did know that for this exercise Monoma would have to set aside his pride. But he was still worried that Monoma would make this much harder then it has to be.
Each of them were concerned for there students, the problem students in particular. But never the less they went their separate ways. Off to inform their students of the chaos that was to come.
Midoriya was in the common room talking to Todoroki when Aizawa entered with a blank face and called a class meeting. Neither had any clue what the meeting could be about as the class hadn't broke any rules for once. Nor had any of them been attacked recently. Never the less, they both moved to the lounge. Midoriya was sat down next to Kaminari while Todoroki was sitting on the arm of the chair (something he had started doing when Ashido had complained about him always either sitting ridged or standing when there wasn't a place on the lounge.) Once they were seated they turned to look at Aizawa, Midoriya could feel the curiosity buzzing inside him but he kept his attention full.
"Alright you hell spawn. Listen up cause it's a lot I'm about to say." Kaminari and Midoriya glanced at eachother. Silent agreement that whatever it was that Aizawa was about to tell them, it would do them well to not piss him off while he was speaking.
"The ra- principal, has decided to give the Hero Course a little test in order to prepare you for something that we were originally keeping a secret. Firstly I will explain what we've been keeping from you." There was muttering amongst the class, but they soon shut up at their teachers glare.
"There is most likely a traitor in U.A. This traitor has been giving information to the League for the past few months."
'So nothing that me and Roki haven't already figured out then?' Thought Midoriya, it was true, Todoroki and him had already guessed that there was a traitor. Heck they and a list of suspects that they had been talking about and had even singled out the top three people. Midoriya was almost certain that he knew who it was.
"Sir! Doesn't You telling us about the traitor meant hat the traitor will be more careful!?" Iida questioned, hands choping.
"I appreciate the concern but the traitor is already being careful enough that we don't have any solid suspects yet. Moving back to the topic at hand, Nezu is making it so that each of you we receive a letter in two to four days. That letter we contain which part you will be playing for the next three weeks."
"Wait why do we have to play a character? I thought we were preparing for the traitor thing?" Kaminari asked, confusion evident in his face.
"Interrupt me again and I'll leave you with nothing. It does have to do with the test just wait for me to explain. Now, there are four roles that you could get, each roles is very important to this exercise. You will find out what the roles are once you get your letter. I'll warn you now that I have no say in who gets what, in fact, no one knows who'll get what. This is a test for the staff as much as it is for you. But should we figure it out before you it won't count and you will still have to find who it is yourselves, we are allowed to give minimal hints if you are truly struggling." Midoriya nodded. He was sure that Aizawa was heavily editing what Nezu had said. But it would suffice for now.
"Any questions before I leave?" Midoriya raised his hand after Kaminari's and Ashido's shot up. Aizawa nodded to him in acknowledgement.
"How do we know the teachers aren't receiving letters as well? Can we really trust you to give hints when you could just be putting the blame on someone else? Also if this is some kind of logical ruse created to see how we would react to the theroy of there being a traitor amongst us could you admit it now so that we dont have to stress about another thing?"
Aiza- Pretty much everyone looked at Midoriya. This was out of character for him, he usually never accused someone of something. Hell usually he was taking the blame for something someone else did, his teacher about trusting him in the future? That shocked everybody. But one of them had to admit that they were impressed at the forwardness. It was so out of character but yet the questions made sense.
"Unfortunately this is not a logical ruse. Had it been then I assure you that I would have been more joyful than I am now. The teachers will not be receiving letters, they are just the bystanders until the traitor reveals themselves. All the hints you may receive will be run by Nezu as to ensure that it doesn't sound like its targeting someone its not."
"What do you mean by "reveals themselves?" Don't we have to find them?" Ashido raised her hand again. Not waiting to be acknowledged before she asked.
"Should you not find out who the traitor is within the first week, the traitor will play into their part and reveal themselves. Remember, class 1B will also be apart of this. The traitor might not even be in this class."
'Not even in this class? That means that the number of possible traitors isn't high. One between four of them is most likely considering the fact theres forty students in the hero course, there's most likely more then forty cards to be handed out. Which means that there might not even be one in general. What are the other roles? There's obviously traitor and hero so what are the others? A target perhaps? A person to kidnap? That would make sense as Nezu has most likely attempted to inculde things that have happened to us into the exercise. And since Katsuki was a target for the League at the training camp it's smart to have another situation such as that in case we ever have to protect a given target again. With all these questions the question of who will know more comes to play. Will the traitor or the hero's know more? Or will they know the same amount but in different pieces?' Millions of questions buzzed through the boys mind. Not that he would be getting any answers. As Aizawa looked at the clock on the wall, it was past curfew now. Damn Nezu holding meetings at night.
"That's enough questions for tonight, go to bed all of you." They all murmured their goodnights and we'll wishes as they did as he said, going to bed with the exercise in mind.
The next morning Midoriya woke around 4am, his routine was one to be feared by all. He went down to the common room and made two sandwiches, one peanut butter and the other a lettuce, ham, tomato and cheese sandwich. He then wrapped them up and went to the fridge to grab two bottles of water, he placed the four things into his little bag and went for his early morning run around the forest.
Like everday he stoped to say hello to Hound Dog and gave him the peanut butter sandwich and a bottle of water before continuing on his way.
'Time to go to the building.' He thought. The building was within the walls of U.A. but it was completely useless to the school. In fact, Midoriya heard that they were planning on knocking it down the next month. Which he thought a shame considering it only took a month to fix up by himself. All that was left was the paint and decoration.
He had found the building while on one of his morning runs not long after the dorms were first implemented. The outside looked fine if you ignored the cracks but the inside was trashed. Things broken, rubbish everywhere, decay, empty books. Just random things or bent pillars. You could see scorch marks all across the room, it was probably one of the buildings that Endevour used to use while he was at U.A.
When Midoriya first got there he didn't just see a building that was trashed, he saw that sure but it wasn't all he saw. He saw opportunity within the building, he saw potential.
And so he had started to fix the place up, one room at a time he cleaned and cleaned until there wasn't a spec of rubbish to be seen. It was much easier cleaning the building up then the beach. He then moved on to fixing things, he did however just give in and buy a lot of new stuff since some of the things just couldn't be fixed. He spent a lot of money using Todoroki's credit card.
Now he's brought paint, its the weekend so he could spend the entirety of the day painting. It wasn't out of ordinary for him to disappear on the weekends, the school knew that he didn't leave the grounds, they just didn't know where he was. It probably should have concerned him that Nezu left such obvious blanks in the security system. But it worked in his favour so he wasn't about to complain.
'Where is that damn brush? And that roller? They're in here somewhere, I know it I made sure to put everything in here this morning.' He muttered, in search of the items.
"Ah ha!" He called in delight. Then turning to the paint, and no he didn't have All Might themed paint, he had normal colours. In all honestly he was getting sick of all that All Might stuff, but he was even more sick of his classmates thinking that he brought it all, as if he could've afforded it even if he had wanted it. It was All Might who had forced it on him. Not even considering the possibility that his student wasn't so obsessed with him as everyone thought.
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"YOUNG MIDORIYA!! I AM.... GIVING YOU A GIFT!!" He yelled before a mountain of All Might merch came spilling infront of the green haired boy. Who was shocked at both the arrival of his mentor, and the stream of merch filing in.
"A-all Might! Y-you shouldn't have." 'You really shouldn't have.' He thought as he looked up at the man.
"OH BUT YOUNG MIDOR-." He shrunk down into his small form as a coughing fit came over him. Since his battle with All for One, he couldn't keep it up for more then a minute.
"A-all Might! Are you okay?" 'Your own fault for doing something you were told not to do.'
"I am okay, do you like the presents? I got you some limited edition All Might figurines." The man smiled down at Midoriya, quite frankly Midoriya was annoyed at the action. But he didn't say anything about it.
"Yes! Thank you All Might!" He wasn't really all that thankful, where would he put all this?
"It was not problem young Midoriya! I figured since you get to decorate your dorm rooms that you'd like some more merch of your favorite hero!"
"Oh, but I-" but the older man didn't seem to hear him.
"Anyways I must be leaving now. Teahcer duties and all. I am leaving!" He walked away, leaving an almost angry Midoriya behind.
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Thing is, Midoriya had wanted to decorate his room his way, not his mentors way. So, he was just going to have to do what he had wanted to do now, with his building.
The paint Midoriya had got came in different colours, there were different shades of green, there was grey, black, white, purple, cream, deep blue, silver, blood red, and light pink. He wasn't going to paint everything, just the walls and a few other things.
'Ok what to paint first? Hm, I'll just start with the walls. This room could be the black and the forest green. Yeah that would look good.' And so he set to work, he decided that the black would go in the corners and the green would blend into the black before being a soild green in the middle of each wall.
"Phew" he wiped some sweat off his forehead, then looking at the alarm clock he brought a few days ago. He had been painting for a good solid three hours now, it was now 8:46. This was the usual time that he took a break. So he put down the roller, and he went over to his bag. He pulled out the water and the sandwich he had made, then finding a chair to sit on.
"I wonder what the class is doing right now? Probably just starting to wake up." He took a bite of his sandwich. It was a bloody good sandwich in his opinion. Then again that could just be him forgetting to eat till he was finished a task in which case anything tastes heavenly.
Once Midoriya finished he picked up the roller again he cleaned it and started painting in the next room, the colours this time being grey and a washed out green. The grey went in the corners and the green in the center. As Midoriya painted he hummed, that hum soon turned into song. He had been doing that quite a lot since he found his building.
"~I take my pills and I'm happy all the time, I'm happy all the time, I'm happy all the time, I love my girl but she ain't worth the price. She ain't worth the price. No, she ain't worth the price~"
He was always a good singer, having perfect pitch probably helped in learning how to. He could easily change the melody and tempo of a song. Could adapt his voice to the type of song he was singing. Hell he learn how to sing musical style for shots and giggles in middle school.
"~La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
We can go to my house if you wanna
Hang out in my bedroom, lose your honour
Even if they find us, we're apathetic
And they can't take that away~"
He started painting the middle of the wall first, smiling as the words fowed from his mouth.
"~I take my pills and I'm happy all the time
I'm happy all the time
I'm happy all the time
I love my girl but she ain't worth the price
She ain't worth the price
No, she ain't worth the price
La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
The voices in my right brain are kinda funny
They tell me, "Take a deep breath, it's always sunny"
But where I leave the lights on
It's so obvious that my life's pretty plain
I take my pills and I'm happy all the time
I'm happy all the time
I'm happy all the time
I love my girl but she ain't worth the price
She ain't worth the price
No, she ain't worth the price~"
He remembered the night he wrote this song. It was a clear night. He had been treating a broken ankle when he got the inspiration. Having taken pain killers to ease the pain as he worked.
"~La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
We take strange things to feel normal
We take strange things to feel normal
We take strange things to feel normal
To feel normal, to feel normal~"
Midoriya had been obsessed with being normal at that point in his life. To the point where he had punished himself whenever he slipped up and did something that annoyed someone.
"~I take my pills and I'm happy all the time
I'm happy all the time
I'm happy all the time
I love my girl but she ain't worth the price
She ain't worth the price
No, she ain't worth the price
La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-lala
La-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-lala~"
He finished the song in a whisper. Starring at the fresh paint on the wall. That was when he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. Putting down the roller and brushing himself off he pulled the phone from his pocket to see someone calling him.
"Hello?"